The Social Economy Centre (OISE/UT) Presents
The Quebec Social Economy: Building a Movement for a More Democratic Economy

Nancy Neamtan, Executive Director
Le Chantier de l'économie sociale

Nancy Neamtan will discuss how, over the past decade, a wide range of Quebec organisations have come together to promote and develop a citizen-based approach to economic development based on the cooperative and non-profit sector.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Noon - 1:30 pm

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

252 Bloor St. West, Toronto

Room 12-199

by Adriane Paavo

Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada

Workaholism is deeply rooted in labour-movement culture.

While unions have successfully fought to reduce the work day and week for members, these same unions demand long hours of work from their leaders. These workload expectations assume that union leaders - elected, hired, and volunteer - are men who are always available and have no competing responsibilities or interests. For those who do not fit this male-leader model, becoming and remaining a leader in the union movement is impossible or onerous.

To read more, visit http://www.justlabour.yorku.ca/volume8/pdfs/01%20Paavo%20Press.pdf.

What is union leadership development? Why is it important? What programs are being offered? What training should union leaders be doing?

These are the questions that drive this web site project.

It was conceived out of concern that Canadian unions often define leadership development narrowly. Most focus their attention on building the labour relations skills of local activists.

The information and tools on this site are intended to contribute to the Canadian labour movement's discussions about organizational development -- about how to manage better -- to build stronger and more powerful unions.

To read more, go to http://homepage.mac.com/mballantyne/unionleadership/index.html.

October 18-20, 2007

Organized and supported by:

Labour Education Centre (LEC), Labour Community Services, Toronto and York Region Labour Council, United Way Canada, Black Action Defense Committee, Ontario Federation of Labour, Learning Community Unionism Working Group, Centre for the Study of Education and Work (OISE/UT), North Etobicoke Revitalization Project (NERP), Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), Toronto Training Board (TTB), Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL), Workers' Action Centre, UNITEHERE, Community Social Planning Council (CSPC).

Location: 89 Chestnut Residence Conference, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON

Dynamic Speakers include:

• Terry Downey, Executive-Vice President, Ontario Federation of Labour

• Judy Shum, Project Coordinator, North Etobicoke Revitalization Partnership

• Tam Goossen, Chair, Urban Alliance on Race Relations

• Andrea van den Heever, President, Connecticut Centre for a New Economy
  

Register online now at:

https://www.sporg.com/registration?link_type=reg_info&

formid=91245&view_type=windowed&returnURL=http://www.learningwork.ca/csew

Or print out this registration form and mail or fax it to:

Christine Greaves, ONESTEP

207-517 Wellington Street West

Toronto, ON M5V 1G1

Fax: (416) 591-9126

For more information, contact tomeesojourner@yahoo.ca.

This booklet is intended to provide some ‘basic answers to basic questions' that our lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) members are routinely asked, as well as responses to questions that aren't asked, but perhaps our allies would like some answers to. Contents include definitions of terms used in the LGBT community, information about basic bargaining and workplace issues, suggestions for allies, and basic responses to questions about same-sex marriage, trans issues, LGBT families, etc.

From 28 May - 1 June 2007, three organizations will come together for the first time in a joint conference. The International Co-operative Alliance Committee on Co-operative Research (ICA), the Canadian Association for Studies in Co-operation (CASC), and the Association for Cooperative Educators (ACE) will together host one unified conference in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

The goal of a human society must be that of ‘ensuring overall human development'. Implicit is the recognition that the full development of our creative potential is not occurring but that it is possible. In other words, what we observe now in the capacities of human beings is not all that is possible, what we observe now is a fraction of what we can be.

• SES2999H Learning in work and community sites: an exploration of community unionism (Summer Session 1 - May to June)

• SES2999H: Neo-Liberalism, Globalization and Human Capital Learning: Reclaiming Education and the Workplace for Democratic Citizenship (Summer Session 2 – July to August)

Full details at: http://sec.oise.utoronto.ca/english/lectures.php

Community Friends for Peace and Understanding with Six Nations, a grass-roots coalition of community and labour activists is hosting this meeting in order to create a place for trade union activists in southern Ontario to come together to build union support for the Six Nations reclamation.

Discussions on:

• The relation between Disability Studies with other studies of social difference, diversity, and equity.

• Can Disability Studies venture where no one has gone before?

• Your thoughts on the meaning and place of Disability Studies

12th floor Boardroom (12-199), OISE/UT

252 Bloor St. West (St. George subway)

Skills, Jobs and Immigrants: Who's Working, What's Working - A Conference

by Wendy Terry, Learning Curves (Workers' Educational Association)

Many Learning Curves' readers are highly skilled newcomers, so the Skills, Jobs and Immigrants conference [sponsored by the Centre for the Study of Education and Work] was of direct interest to them, especially those who have had difficulty getting into the labour market. There are a few innovative programs to help them, but they often feel confused by the variety of programs and frustrated by the inability to get into one of them.

Speaker: Blaine Donais

Tuesday, February 27, 12-2 pm
OISE/UT, 252 Bloor St. West
(St. George subway station, Bedford exit)
2nd floor, room 2-211

The past forty years have produced two dominant models in workplace conflict management theory - the Justice Model used primarily by the labour movement and responses to decreasing union density and the Efficiency Model which seeks to produce low cost, simple and efficient conflict management systems. This seminar proposes a theory that unifies approaches taken to the analysis of workplace conflict management systems. This Fairness Theory of Workplace Conflict Management is based upon the liberal democratic notion that all workplace participants have a right to fairness in the workplace. And fairness is defined as "equality of concern and respect."

The United Association for Labor Education invites you and your colleagues to our 2007 Annual Meeting - "THE NEW FACES OF THE AMERICAN WORKER: What Implications for Organized Labor?"

Drop in to the Grand Opening of the OPSECAAT / OPSEU Toronto Campaign offices:

Jan. 30 from 4 - 7 p.m. at 31 Wellesley St. East (416-928-2489)
Feb. 6 from 4 - 7 p.m. at 100 Lesmill Rd. (416-448-7433)

TORONTO - By 12:13 pm on New Year's Day, while many Canadians were still nursing a hangover, Canada's 100 highest paid CEOs had already pocketed what will take minimum wage workers the rest of 2007 to earn.

Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations (OCUFA)
One-day Academic Conference
Friday, January 19, 2007
Renaissance Toronto Hotel

The conference will bring together researchers from universities in Canada and the United States. The conference is designed to reflect on the changing nature of academic work, the trends that underpin it, the implications for faculty, students, and higher education in general, and preferred future directions to ensure quality and equity in our universities.

Building Bridges: Labour Studies Conference

University of Windsor, Windsor, Canada

How can we defend and create good jobs, protect the environment, challenge injustice and inequality, and create peace?

Class Matters: Working-Class Culture and Counter-Culture

June 14-17, 2007

Annual Conference of the Working-Class Studies Association

Macalester College, St. Paul, Minnesota, USA

This conference will explore working-class culture in all its forms - activism, pop culture, the arts, storytelling, and more.

Work Studies as Humanization: A Freirean Approach to Lifelong Learning

Speaker: Emery J. Hyslop-Margison

Tuesday, August 7, 3-5 pm
OISE/UT, 252 Bloor St. West
(St. George subway station, Bedford exit)
8th floor, room 8-201

This presentation contrasts the view of lifelong learning posed by the human capital discourse with Paulo Freire's understanding of education as a lifelong journey toward personal growth and social transformation. Rather than reducing learners to objects of economic globalization and labour market change, Freire's pedagogy considers students political participants who actively shape their vocational and social lives.

Join our listserv and keep yourself "in the loop"!

Send an email request to join to: rsussman@oise.utoronto.ca.

• Get dates for all Centre for the Study of Education & Work (CSEW) and Work & Lifelong Learning Research Network (WALL) events: Speaker's Series, Conferences, Publications

• Learn of new or upcoming publications, events, and conferences on topics related to Lifelong Learning (both national and international)

Thank you & we look forward to keeping you connected!

If you'd like to view previous postings, visit http://ca.groups.yahoo.com/group/csew/ and click on "Messages".

"We need policies that allow people...to move in and out of the labour force. We need policies that look at more than jobs. We need policies that look at overall sustainable livelihoods, that look at people as assets and not deficits, and not as something that needs to be fixed...We need employment policies that are sensitive to the entirety of workers' lives. We need ways to allow women to go to work, to allow people with disabilities to go to work, and to allow all of us to be productive workers who participate in Canada's economic growth and productivity." - Karen Lior, Toronto Training Board

The New Brunswick Labour History Project invites applications for graduate fellowships at the University of New Brunswick and the Université de Moncton in the history of labour in 20th century New Brunswick.

A new course will be offered this fall at OISE/UT (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto) on "Learning to address conflict in workplaces" (SES2999H). It will run on Wednesday evenings from 5:30 to 8:30, starting September 19, 2007.

The course will be led by D'Arcy Martin, coordinator of the Centre for the Study of Education and Work . D'Arcy is an adult educator and social activist who has worked primarily as a labour educator for the past 30 years.

For more information on this course, visit the Sociology & Equity Studies in Education Dept. of OISE/UT.

Compared to students from lower-income families, youth from well-to-do families generally perform better on standardized reading, mathematics and science tests; generally report higher marks; are far more likely to live with two birth parents and far less likely to live with only one parent; are more likely to have university-educated parents; are more likely to have parents who expect them to complete a university degree; and a larger proportion of their friends plan on furthering their education following high school. Moreover, students from well-to-do families are more likely to attend high schools that have a high propensity to produce university-bound students after accounting for student characteristics. Youth from higher-income families are also less likely to report financial reasons for not attending university.

While opportunities to reflect on our practices with other educators have been rare enough, there have been even fewer chances to collectively nurture the development of new work in a laboratory environment. CSEW organized the day-long Design Clinic to address this need.

The Work and Lifelong Learning Resource Base (WALLRB) provides a wide range of bibliographic references and links to full-text sources of research on diverse forms of lifelong learning and diverse forms of work, with a primary focus on the relations between learning and work.
         http://wall.oise.utoronto.ca/resources/WALLRB.htm

‘This book has the great strength of being based on an extremely rich and detailed foundation of research data. Because of this, it is able to firmly locate workplace learning within the wider settings of the employment relationship and widely differing organisational strategies. It should be required reading for all involved in public policy on skills.' - Ewart Keep, University of Cardiff, UK

The PASCAL Observatory on Place Management, Social Capital and Learning Regions invites contributions to its 5th international conference on the theme of ‘Lifelong Learning in the City-Region' in Pecs, Hungary between 23 and 25 September 2007.Please find attached the Conference Brochure which contains the full programme, registration form and information about submitting abstracts.

The Researching Work and Learning Conference (RWL5) will be held in Cape Town, South Africa in December 2007. The conference will aim to provide the space for rethinking `work`, ‘knowledge' and `learning` within a context where the global economy increasingly challenges the traditional dichotomies between home-life and work-life, between employment and unemployment, paid work and unpaid work.

• Develop an action plan based on key labour market trends and issues;
• Summarize local labour market intelligence; and
• Identify opportunities to create or initiate partnerships that address
  the priorities of the local labour market.

December 6, 2006

OTTAWA-Canada is falling behind a number of OECD nations in a wide range of social and economic areas, and a study released today by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives points to tax cuts as the culprit.

The Indiana University Division of Labor Studies (DLS), part of the School of Continuing Studies, provides educational resources to workers and unions in Indiana and elsewhere.

Organized in 1946, the division has grown to become one of the largest and most highly respected university labor education programs in the United States. Today, with faculty and staff located throughout the state, the DLS serves thousands of participants in a variety of programs each year.

by Nancy Romer

I have been in Mexico City for the last week observing and participating in the struggle that has captured the dreams and fears of the Mexican people--the struggle for workers rights and democracy in Oaxaca, a poor state with a mostly indigenous population.

Campus Canada is your way to improve your educational opportunities and to advance in your career. We are a national partnership of colleges, polytechnical institutes and universities that offer online and distance education specifically for working adults.

Join us on November 24 for the release of a new book by Janice Brant

The Aboriginal Literacy Curriculum Tool Box: Cultural Philosophy, Curriculum Design & Strategies for Self-Directed Learning

Who faces barriers - in the workplace, in the union, in education and training? What can the union do differently once aware of these barriers? What results are achieved? Is there a broader impact within the union? These are some of the questions answered in a new report prepared by the Labour Education Centre and Centre for the Study of Education and Work (CSEW).